Don't Come Home for Christmas
by Bernie Boosie
Summary: “Victor?” I scoffed, “You’re wasting your Christmas on Vicky?” My voice rose in volume, “Hermione, this is our last Christmas before we leave Hogwarts and you want to waste it on him?” I stopped staring at her; glaring at the blank expression she was givi


**Disclaimer: **I don't own anything! Characters, sets, and the whole idea come from J.K. Rowling. The song 'Yule Shoot Your Eye Out' by Fall Out Boy was also incorporated into this story, which I don't own either by the way. Don't sue!

**Rated:** PG just in case

**Summary:** _"Victor?" I scoffed, "You're wasting your Christmas on Vicky?" My voice rose in volume, "Hermione, this is our last Christmas before we leave Hogwarts and you want to waste it on him?" I stopped staring at her; glaring at the blank expression she was giving me. "Don't waste it on him, not Vicky." I said the last part with utter disgust in my voice. Waste it on me. I wanted to say, but I didn't have enough balls to.  
_Hermione decides to spend Christmas with Victor instead of Ron, Ron doesn't take it to well.

**A/N:** So Bernie, who is like my mentor (I'm Boosie) said that I should do something not angsty, 'cause basically that's all I ever write. So I asked her, 'What?' and she said 'How about a Christmas story.' So I was like, 'But all the Christmas fics are gay and fluffy.' So she was like 'Well, then why don't you make the first non-gay and fluffy Christmas fic?' So I decided to try, and this is what I came up with. It's not fluff and it's not a song-fic though it is loosely based on the song, 'Yule Shoot Your Eye Out' by Fall Out Boy. Hope you like! _(Note: I am not say that all Christmas fics are gay and fluff, just that that's basically the stereo type and I would never want to fall into a stereo type. I am also not saying that if you write fluff you're a bad writer, I have written fluff myself it's just not really my style. I do enjoy some fluff though.)

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**Don't Come Home for Christmas**

* * *

"So, er, Hermione, Mum said you could come to the Burrow for Christmas, so well, I was wondering if you wanted to come..." I said. I could feel my cheeks burning bright red, feeling so many eyes on me. Why had I decided to ask her this in the middle of the common rooms? More importantly, why did I still turn red, after six and a half years of being friends with her? 

"Oh Ron," She sort of sighed it in a dejected sort of way, the same way she always said things like, _Are you ok? _And, _I'm sure you'll grade will be better next time, if you apply yourself and maybe, study a little…?_ It's not really a bad sort of way, at least not as bad as it would have been if she used her angry voice or her Are-You-Kidding-Me? Voice. "I, well, I kinda already told someone I would spend Christmas with them." She mumbled the last part really quick and got that look of pity on her face, the one that always seemed to appear when talking to me these days in her eyes.

"Oh, well that's fine;" I said, running a hand through my hair, "Um, but, who?" She took a sharp breath and her face changed quickly from sympathetic to aggressive.

"Well, you may not want to hear it Ron, but… Well, Victor is coming over to my house for Christmas." She tilted her head off to one side, standing stiffly and avoiding my eyes.

"Victor?" I scoffed, "You're wasting your Christmas on Vicky?" My voice rose in volume, "Hermione, this is our last Christmas before we leave Hogwarts and you want to waste it on him?" I stopped staring at her, glaring at the blank expression she was giving me. "Don't waste it on him, not _Vicky_." I said the last part with utter disgust in my voice. _Waste it on me._ I wanted to say, but I didn't have enough balls to.

"Ron, _don't _order me around. And don't call him Vicky!" Hermione's voice rose to meet my volume and yet somehow managed to be, not quite a yell, more of an order. She tipped her head up staring me right in the eye and somehow managed to make me feel a head shorter than she. "Actually, I figured that since he invited me to spend the summer with him, and I spent it with you instead, that spending Christmas with Victor would even everything out." Hermione explained slowly, lowering her eyes and calming herself down, I watched her breathing in and out, controlling her anger, and that just made me even more furious.

"Even everything… Even… out?" I sputtered.

"You're both my friends Ron, you have to understand that."

"Hermione, he-he was Harry's competition, he was the enemy. How can you spend your Christmas with the enemy?" I asked, my nostrils flaring.

"Ron! That was two years ago! He's not Harry's competition anymore, and he was never his enemy!" She sighed squinting at me, "He's my friend."

"Didn't want to be just your friend though did he? Even though he's practically twice your bloody age! The old-"

"_Ron." _

"Fine. Fine, don't take my advice; go spend your summer with Vicky. Maybe this year he'll actually get your name right, Her-mio-ninny." I said the last part very slowly as though explaining something to someone very stupid. I stormed out of the common rooms, stomping my way up the stairs to my dormitory.

* * *

We didn't talk the rest of the weekend, she tried once or twice, mentioning the presents she had bought us and the owls she was sending but my glares silenced her for the most part. Harry would just sigh and roll his eyes but I could tell he too was a bit annoyed at Hermione for not spending Christmas with us. 

"Ignoring her isn't going to change her mind you know," Harry grunted as I wadded up an old sweater and stuffed it in my overflowing trunk.

"Already tried talking her out of it, practically bit my head off," I replied, "How did I get all this stuff to fit when I was packing to come here?" I asked myself out loud. Harry shrugged, raising his eyebrows and began packing his own trunk for the holidays.

"Maybe if you asked her-"

"I did ask-"

"And if you explained how important-"

"She knows it's important to me otherwise I wouldn't have been yelling-"

"And managed _not _to yell-"

"So now it's my fault she's not coming? Thanks Harry, really, I thought you were on my side." I muttered switching my biggest lumpiest sweater for a thinner one with too short arms.

"I'm not on anyone's _side_. If it were my choice I would want her to have Christmas with us but-"

"Why is it her choice? I mean, we're a team right? And if two members of the team want her with us for Christmas, then that's two against one, she loses, I win." Harry rolled his eyes.

"Yeah Ron, and if Hermione and I vote that you go spend Christmas with Luna Lovegood then you have to do it." I threw the lumpy sweater at Harry and he ducked.

"I'm just saying that my _friendly_ advice for her is not to hang out with shifty old gits like that and-"

"And my _friendly_ advice for you is to apologize, give her, her Christmas present and ask if she could maybe Floo Powder over for Christmas dinner or something."

"_Me_ apologize to _her_, after she blows up at me all because I was trying to give her some advice?"

Harry just gave me that sort of raised eyebrow look and walked backwards out the door taking his packed trunk with him.

"Well, I'm sorry that my advice wasn't good enough for you, but it's what I think is best for you, and if that isn't good enough then-then don't take my advice!" I yelled imagining Hermione standing there in front of me. I closed my trunk, sitting on top.

I looked at her carefully wrapped present, it wasn't anything too special, a pair of earrings Ginny helped me get and little leather bond notebook for her to take notes in or make schedules, or whatever it was she did when she was scribbling away.

I had meant to write her some sort of note in the beginning of the book, something clever to make her laugh, or smile. Something to remind her of me, while she was discovering new spells our species or whatever it was she was going to do after school.

I took my ink and dipped the pointed end of my quill in it, careful not to drip.

_Hermione,_

I paused staring at the carefully printed name several easy lines popped into my mind about how I'd made it through school without being expelled, or how I didn't even have to cheat on my O. W. L.'s to finish, but would she please let me borrow some answers for the N. E. W. T. 's. I didn't write any of them down though. How could I write something light and easy like that? How could I just ignore the fact that she was abandoning me for Christmas for Victor Krum? What if she did the same thing after school ended.

"I spent all of school with you Ron, and now that school's done I think it's only fair to spend all my free time with Victor- to even it out."

I pressed my quill against the parchment.

_These were our good years, _

I started.

_Would have been our best Christmas yet probably, but don't take my advice and spend it with Harry and me._ _You never wanted to be with someone like me anyways._ _You always need better; why have a nice ordinary boy when you can have a Champion, a Pro._

_But honestly, why should you care? I shouldn't either right? _

_I hope you realize that the only gift you'll be getting from me this year is, a pool of silence; And the hope that you cry yourself to sleep, staying up, waiting by the window looking out into the gray skies in hope to see my owl flying towards you, but you won't._

_Don't' bother buying me anything either, because all I want this year is for you to dedicate your last breath to me, before you bury yourself alive. _

_Don't bother coming home for Christmas, spend it with Vicky, with someone you actually bother to notice. _

_Cause you're the last thing I want to see on Christmas morning beside the Christmas tree, beside the decorations- underneath the mistletoe. _

_Merry Christmas Hermione, I hope you get exactly what you deserve. I won't be happy when you do because you taught me something, not to care. And I don't. I really don't care.

* * *

_

"Scowling at everyone really isn't going to help your gift situation," Fred said starting up a game of exploding snap with George, Ginny and Harry. I gave Fred an extra glare.

"He's right you know," George added, "I already ate part of what I was going to give you."

"I'm not scowling," I muttered crossing my arms and sliding down in my chair.

"If you miss her so much just go send her an owl," Ginny suggested.

"I don't know what you're talking about." I snapped.

"You could stop on over at her house, Mum bought some more Floo powder yesterday." George suggested.

"Or take you're broom, it's a bit snowy out but sometimes a good fly can really clear my thoughts, I always think up my best pick-up lines while I'm flying." Fred added.

"What?" I asked a bit too loudly, "I don't _need_ pick-up lines and- and I don't miss her, so just sod off!"

"You could use Floo to just take a look, you know, just to see what she's doing-" Harry started.

"Harry I can't believe you're encouraging Ron to _spy_ on Hermione," Ginny cut in disapprovingly. "If Hermione wants to spend her Christmas with someone other then you two then you should respect her decision, Victor respected her decision to spend summer with you and-"

"Yeah ok Gin'" I yelled behind me as I left the room, shutting the door behind me. I took a handful of Floo Powder, checking first to make sure I was alone.

_I'll just pop in real quick to make sure Hermione's having a miserable time, _I assured myself as I fingered the floo powder in my hand, finally I got the gall, and tossed it into the fire. I leaned into the Flames yelling: "Granger Residence" hoping that they were still in the Floo Network.

The Granger's living room swirled violently into view, from the carefully polished silver candleholders on the coffee table, to the mistletoe hanging in the doorway. Somewhere on the other side of the large Christmas tree someone was talking, I strained my ears to listen.

"This, eh, Ron Wesley fellow, he, eh, what would be the word, he a, eh, fancy on you?" a low voice said, having trouble with the pronunciation of some words.

"Oh no," Hermione said in a high pitched voice, "No, we're just, well, umm no he doesn't." Her voice said, I strained my ears trying to hear better.

"So, you, eh, you fancy him" I watched under the tree as a big foot tapped impatiently.

"No," Hermione said slowly, as if she weren't positive.

"And eh, Harry Potter?"

"No, not him either," She said quicker and a bit more confidently.

"Then you wouldn't mind if I, uh, I do not know the word." And then I watched as the feet started walking, Victor sputtering over some Bulgarian words I didn't understand, and then they were standing in that doorway, that stupid doorway and Victor's big ugly face closing in on Hermione's pointy and petite one.

I pulled my head out of the fire, I didn't want to hear, or see, or know for that matter, what was just about to happen. I rushed out of the room wiping ash from my face and pushed past Harry as he asked how it went. Once again I was stomping up the stairs to my room.

* * *

"Happy New Year." I grunted at Hermione, after Harry had already given her a hug. 

"Ron," Hermione approached me cautiously as though I were a raging lunatic, on the edge of murder. "I missed you." She said her brown eyes big and round. I stared at the sweater she was wearing knowing it was the one Harry had given her, and thinking about the wrapped Christmas present I still had for her in my trunk- the note.

For a split second I wanted to hug her too, I wanted to forget what I had seen and go back to the world that made sense but I didn't; all I could do was grunt as I pulled my trunk up on the train. Harry gave me a look and muttered something about finding Ginny.

"I was wondering, if maybe, next year, Ron, you'd like to come over to my house for Christmas." Hermione said this so meekly, and I knew that she was only doing it to make me feel better, a sympathy vote for Ron.

I stared at her shocked.

"You can't be serious," I yelled smiling maliciously. "You know what Hermione? You owe me." I said, wanting to laugh at the surprised face Hermione made, I knew this was definitely not the reply she was expecting.

"What? I owe you?" She asked slowly.

"You gave Vicky his turn," _and more_, "And now you owe me, the best gift I could ever ask for."

"Umm, ok," Hermione started slowly. "What is it that you want?"

"I want you not to ask me to come over to your house when Christmas comes around next year, that's the only thing I want this year." And I handed her back her present that I hadn't even unwrapped yet. She looked as though she was going to cry, but I just smiled knowing that I had won, knowing that her last breath before she beat herself up inside belonged to me.

I won because all she did get from me that Christmas was one awkward silence as we stared at each other from different sides of the commons and a couple of nights crying herself to sleep, waiting to hear someone sliding down the steps that turn into a slide when a boy foolishly tries to get up them to the girl's dormitory.

I won because I got that one last breath of our friendship.

Victory never tasted so sour.

* * *

"She's really upset over it, you know." Harry said seriously. "She forgot to turn in Potions homework because she was too busy worrying about having to sit next to you with you ignoring her and all-" 

"She could have switched seats with that cow Pansy Parkinson and sat next to Malfoy, for all I care." I cut in harshly. Harry rolled his eyes.

"In any case, from what I hear you don't have to worry about Victor anymore." I sat up all my attention on Harry.

"What? Why, who told you?" I asked the words running together.

"Ginny. She said Hermione realized that she had missed Victor during school and last summer, but that she missed someone else even more during that one two weeks than she missed Victor over the whole year." Harry raised his eyebrows at me. "Ginny told me, to tell you that next year, you'd better not come home for Christmas."

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**A/N Continued:** So, I hope you liked it, please review! Whether you liked it, hated it, were bored by it, or don't even care. Just leave me a message 'cause that's the only way I know that people are actually reading. Also if you ever want me to write another fan fic again you had better review because otherwise I will just stop and my fan fics will cease to exist. Also if you hate my writing, tell me so that I can stop before I dig myself into a hole and give myself a bad name. Criticism is always welcome! 


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